he was convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to life without parole. at clinton, even inmates like erik jensen were wary of matt. rick was known in there as somebody that you would you would wanna watch your back. you know, you don t wanna do him dirty and then think that he s not gonna do anything about it. reporter: the one man matt seemed to trust was the cop-killer david sweat. he and sweat were getting close to joyce. but while joyce believed it was a friendship. to the inmates it was an opportunity to crack open the door and try to escape. coming up, rumors of romance and more behind prison bars. we all thought they were having sex back there. when dateline continues. with certain diabetes pills or daily insulin, your doctor may be talking about adding medication to help lower your a1c. ask your doctor if adding once-a-week tanzeum
suddenly changed. they wanted a star-shaped bit. reporter: drill bit? yeah. mr. matt asked me for it. but it was for mr. sweat. reporter: okay, but when richard matt comes to you and says, joyce, i need a star-shaped drill bit, that s a lot different than cookies and brownies. yeah. reporter: and what did you think? at first, i m like, i can t get you that. but then he s like, i need it. sweat needs it. reporter: for what? at first, they didn t tell me. reporter: what it sounds like here is that once you made the mistake of crossing a line mr. matt used your transgressions as a way to get you in deeper and deeper and deeper. yes. reporter: and when joyce didn t consent, she says, the demands were backed up by threats. reporter: was he threatening you? was he saying, get me the next thing.
and if you don t get me the next thing, i ll tell people that you got me the first few things and you ll lose your job? no. no, it was always just he was gonna hurt lyle. it was never he was gonna tell anybody anything. reporter: she says she feared matt knew enough about her and her family to make good on his threat to hurt her husband. i was just so scared. matt mr. matt has a lotta power. a lot of power. he could get whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. reporter: you even felt outside of prison? that he could have caused harm to lyle and your family outside the walls of that prison? yes. reporter: in the face of the threats to her husband, joyce says, fear took over. so she continued to bring matt what he wanted, even when he asked for hacksaw blades. but smuggling those into a maximum security prison was a far different proposition than sneaking in baked goods. so after she bought the blades at walmart, joyce improvised and
contact, you were talking about intercourse and you were talking yes. reporter: about consensual sexual contact. yes. reporter: so just to be clear, at no point in this relationship with richard matt was there any, in your opinion, consensual sexual contact between the two of you? there was never any consensual. reporter: when we hear of things that were going on in this tailor shop and even the forced sexual contact between you and mr. matt. my question is did anybody see this? this is a prison. aren t there cameras? doesn t anybody know this type of thing is going on? no. they don t. reporter: joyce says matt began forcing himself on her in other ways, too. while she d been taking baked goods to sweat in prison and sparring gloves matt. in early 2015, the wish list
was reassigned, and he lost the prison wage that bought him favours and relative comfort on the inside. when mr. sweat was removed from the shop and i guess i felt bad, because even though he s an inmate just like you or i, you know, if we lost our jobs, we d want someone to help us. reporter: as joyce took pity on sweat, jeffrey dumas says that was the perfect moment for richard matt to step in. then inmate matt sees his opportunity to be the go between her and sweat, because matt and sweat lived in the same block. so whatever type of friendship that she had with sweat, matt took the opportunity to prey on her. reporter: matt decided to test her by tugging on her